The Moments After
by Abstruse fangirl
Summary: The Doctor reflects on the cost of winning and on his relationship with his companions. Characters: Ten, with references to Martha Jones, Donna Noble, Jack Harkness, Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith, Jackie Tyler, Sarah Jane Smith. Spoilers: The Runaway Bride


**(Disclaimer: All of Doctor Who belongs to ever awesome BBC; I just play with the characters every once in a while.)**

* * *

He pauses on a street corner and looks at the televisions in the shop window. A woman is jumping up and down with her husband, brandishing a winning lottery ticket as if it is the cure for AIDS, Cancer and all the other diseases plaguing the human condition combined. He shrugs his shoulders and deposits a few raindrops back amongst their fellows on the slick pavement beneath his feet, and walks on.

His feet squeak on the newly cleansed concrete. He is thankful for this atmospheric disturbance, and hopes that despite the havoc it is wreaking on the unprepared revelers in the streets of London, it will delay its departure for a few moments longer. He needs every one of those drops that these humans haphazardly wipe away or shield themselves from with push-button umbrellas and coats thrown over their heads; he needs every single one to hide from himself. To hide from the emptiness.

"_You know, you act like such a lonely man. But look at you! You've got the biggest family on earth."_

But did he, really? One moment there they all were—the best of the best, together, in his TARDIS, yelping and cheering like they were at the finals of the World Cup. He'd looked around him and seen Donna hugging Jack, Jackie hugging Rose, his other self hugging Sarah Jane and for one brief moment, the TARDIS had been --not like a bit of home--but was actually home. There, surrounded by so many of the people he loved and so many that he had once thought that he'd lost. These stupid, brave little apes, saving him, saving the Earth, and saving the Universe.

And then, it was over. One by one they had slipped from his grasp and returned back to the wonderful, brilliant lives they'd built for themselves (because of him and without him).

Sarah Jane—she had a son now? Had she been a mother the last time they'd met? 'No,' he told himself, 'I would've remembered that.'

Jack Harkness, back to that rag-tag team of his in Cardiff (whom Jack loved every bit as much as the Doctor loved his own companions if he was being honest).

Martha Jones. His doctor. Back to saving the world from alien invasions and saving herself from a life as someone's second best. He never thought she would set foot upon the TARDIS again after all of that business on Messaline. But somehow he knew that if the call went out, Doctor Martha Jones would be there to answer, always ready to save him (from himself).

Mickey Smith. The Doctor ran his fingers through the wet mop atop his head and wondered how he could ever have underestimated someone so brave and so…so…brilliant. Rose had always seen it, always known but he never had.

Rose Tyler. She'd traveled across dimensions and the void between in order to see him again. It was everything he had never allowed himself to hope for, and everything he would never allow himself to have.

Jackie Tyler. He wasn't 100 glad that she was gone, if he were honest, but he still felt the need to go over the TARDIS with a fine tooth comb just to make sure that no permanent damage had been done in the short time that she'd been aboard.

Donna Noble. The most important woman in all the universe. The only woman to both keep him in his place and to truly understand him.

Gone.

And there was nothing he could do about it.

He balled his hands into fists inside his pockets and felt one close around something small and cold. He reached his hand out of his pocket and held the small object up to the light of a street lamp. The rain glistened on the sides of it like dew in the early morning light.

He curled his fingers around the item and placed it back into his pocket. Such a small thing, but full of so many memories: Christmas Day with Donna & the Racnoss; being stuck with Martha in 1969…

He'd used it once to try and shield his dear Martha Jones from the baseless & negative attitudes of others (_You _want _me_ to rent you a room with _her_?) and he'd tried to shield that brash, steadfast, emotionally devastated Donna Noble from the Racnoss..._well_, before he'd known that they'd been having her dosed with Huon particles on a daily basis by that git of a fiancé of hers…Lance wasn't it?

Slowly, he let the ring slip from his fingers and back into the depths of his pockets. All this transcendental dimensional technology, and yet the one thing he'd rather not find in his Time Lord pockets was the one thing that he couldn't escape.

He sighed, and turned another corner, walking aimlessly down another revelry-striped road. The rain had stopped now, and the streaks of moisture on his face could have just as easily been mistaken for tears of joy instead of what they were. Without a sob, he cried for the wonderful woman that Donna Noble was, that Martha Jones had been, that Rose Tyler was becoming across the void in Pete's World. He let the tears sting his eyes as he thought of the loyalty of Jack Harkness, once abandoned 200,000 years into mankind's future, but who still came back to him. Of Mickey Smith, who was never the Tin Dog and who he should have treated with more dignity from day one. He thought of Sarah Jane, living her life out day after day and still finding a way to insert adventure and intrigue in amongst the never-ending excitement of raising a teenager. He thought of his other self, The Other Doctor, condemned to perpetual stillness on another world with no real hope of seeing the stars ever again.

He thought of them all, and let the tears slide down his face unabashed.

'Why', he wondered, 'does winning always feel so terribly close to losing?'

When had he decided that saving the world-- saving the universe-- was worth the cost?

He slowed down and allowed himself one final turn around the block. He had no idea where he'd left the TARDIS nor any idea of precisely where in London he'd landed. At the time it really hadn't mattered. All he'd wanted was to get away from that little street in Chiswick, and the emptiness in his chest. So he'd done what he did best: he ran.

"_You & Me. Time and Space. You watch us run."_

He had sat in the TARDIS, drenched from the rain, until the emptiness threatened to overtake him. What once had been filled with the jubilance and mirth of celebration was filled now only with the echo of hollows.

It always ended like this for him.

Gallifrey.

Canary Wharf.

The Year that Never Was.

The Library.

And now this.

Somehow, without his even realizing it, he had circled the block (possibly the town) and arrived back in front of the TARDIS.

He resigned himself to the eventuality before him, (all of time and space, but on his own and maybe, just maybe, wasn't it better this way?) closed his eyes and snapped his fingers. The TARDIS door swung open with a slow whine, as if she too was not looking forward to the days and weeks and months to come.

He slid his hands over the console and remembered the look on each of his companions' faces as they'd helped him to pilot the TARDIS and the earth back to where it belonged. He looked across the console to the spot where his most faithful companion, Donna Noble, had stood when he had stolen from her everything that they'd done. Everything they'd experienced.

Humans, with their fleeting lives, were nothing more than the sum of their memories. And here, in his TARDIS, he taken just enough from her to leave her incomplete, and so himself.

"_I was gonna be with you... forever. The rest of my life... travelling... in the TARDIS. The Doctor-Donna."_

They had won the war and battled their personal demons together. And somewhere along the way Donna Noble had discovered just how special she truly was. That she no longer had to shout at the world to be heard. And in an instant, he had taken all of that from her.

"_She was better with you."_

And he had been better with her, better for all of them in his lives. Together they'd won and together he'd lost. For the Doctor, winning always seemed to be a losing proposition.

The Doctor stood at the console and stared at the blank display screen. Absent-mindedly, he twirled the Gravitic Anomalyzer, willing the coordinates to come. It was in these moments, in the aftermath, that he most felt it, the emptiness. When there was no one to hug him, to smile at him at with the stars in their eyes as they readied for another adventure. No one there to reassure him as he thought of all the ones he couldn't save.

When there was no one there to tell him to stop or to start, no one to save him from himself. And no one there to put their hand in his, to let him know by that small bit of pressure upon his own, that the winning was worth the cost.

"_Every night, Doctor... when it gets dark... and the stars come out... I'll look up. On her behalf. I'll look up at the sky and think of you."_

The Doctor turned, his shoulders still drooped, and fired up the Helmic Regulator and the Gravitic Anomalyzer before entering in coordinates into the TARDIS. He wiped his hand across his face and did away with the last remnants of his adventures with Davros, the Stolen Earth and his Children of Time.

What good was prophecy anyway?

With a screech and a grind, the TARDIS dematerialized and flew up into the atmosphere, materializing just long enough for an elderly gentleman standing to attention atop a hill somewhere in Chiswick to give a salute and heavy-hearted goodbye.


End file.
